But visitors might have a problem nailing down accommodations. As city leaders worked overtime Monday trying to defuse an increasingly tense situation, the room-sharing company Airbnb quietly booted users planning to use the service to find housing.

The company confirmed they had taken action in a statement to NBC29: “When through out background check processes or from input of our community we identify and determine that there are those who would be pursuing behavior on the platform that would be antithetical to the Airbnb Community Commitment, we seek to take appropriate action including, as in this case, removing them from the platform.”

That stance didn’t sit well with the rally’s organizer, Jason Kessler.

“This is outrageous and should be grounds for a lawsuit,” Kessler told The Washington Post in an email Monday night. “It’s the racial targeting of white people for their ethnic advocacy.” Kessler added the rally “is opposed to the historical and demographic displacement of white people. Would Airbnb cancel the service of black nationalists or Black Lives Matter activists for their social media activity? Of course not!”

That. Is. Stunning.

Notice what Airbnb did. They ran background checks on these people, determined that they were going to a far-right political rally, and refused them accommodation. Not only did they refuse them accommodation at this particular event, they have blacklisted them forever. As the reader who brought this story to my attention writes:

While White Nationalists are, obviously, vile, this is still an extraordinary precedent. Assuming these folks didn’t say in the comments for their reservations that they were in town to attend the rally, it means that AirBNB either investigated itself or relied on other people’s reports of who was attending the rally, cross-listed that with accounts, and then banned those people. That’s a way more aggressive enforcement of PC politics than what Google did, which at least involved active speech by an employee.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that, in the eyes of many people who work at places like AirBNB, attending a rally against SSM or immigration is essentially the same as attending a Klan rally. And because of the way it’s set up, AirBNB (like Uber and Twitter and most other tech or sharing economy companies) isn’t considered a “public accommodation”, and so there’s nothing legally preventing them from acting this way.

This of course, will provoke a massive backlash. It’s a classic collective action problem in economics. When there is some kind of identitarian conflagration, there are a small number of Leftists who care A LOT that a company take action (like AirBnB or Google). But there are a lot of people who are just a little bit pushed towards white/male identity politics (alt-right) as a result. The net result, over time, will be to continue to promote the alt-right. It is a vicious cycle.

For the record, I believe Airbnb has the right to decide who gets to use their service. I would never open my home or property as an Airbnb place precisely because there are all kinds of people I would not want staying in my home (like, for example, neo-Nazis, but also no doubt some people who would pass muster with Airbnb corporate). That said, the idea that a company would search out the political opinions of those wanting to buy its services and blacklist people over them is scary as hell. Where does it stop?

Nobody feels sorry for neo-Nazis who won’t have a place to stay in Charlottesville. But as the reader points out, this is a truly frightening precedent: Companies doing online searches to see if you are politically correct enough to do business with, and banning you not because of anything you did, necessarily, but because of what you believe. Today they’re banning neo-Nazis from using their service. Tomorrow they’ll ban people who travel to a town for a Trump rally. And the day after tomorrow, they’ll ban Southern Baptists.

Will people now start reporting their conservative neighbors to Airbnb? Will Airbnb homeowners start googling those who want to rent from them, and if they don’t like their politics, inform on them to Airbnb to get them blacklisted? Again: where does it stop?

I’ve said it often, and I’ll keep saying it: Social Justice Warriors have no idea at all what kinds of demons they are summoning.

UPDATE: Forgot to say, this is hardcore Law Of Merited Impossibility stuff: “Airbnb will never ban Southern Baptists, and when it does, those bigots will deserve it.”

In a similar vein, I’ve noticed that many female escorts, including Black ones, who advertise on Backpage explicitly say that they will not accept Black clients. (This is often reduced to “no aa.”) Are they legally required to service Black clients?

This is silly. AB&B absolutely has a right to refuse service. I must say, it is somewhat delightful to know that the white nationalists that will publicly display their hatred and anti-social pathologies, are whining that they can’t book a room with their app. Companies don’t want to do business with them, go figure.

Take a breath. Southern Baptists might be out there but I’m pretty sure swastikas are a universal flag for refusing service and until Christianity is against the law, there is nothing to worry about.

Tech workers in Silicon Valley don’t actually believe any of this identity politics stuff. Have no fear Rod! They only care about money. You are kidding yourself to think that they are going to seek out the nuances of various Christian doctrines to deny service. Swastikas != Cross. The social justice warriors in silicon valley work in HR departments.

God forbid the day that Christians are so unpopular they can’t book an expensive night in someone else’s house. Then we’ll know that the end of Western civilization is upon us! Oh, I shudder at the thought!

“I look forward to a massive lawsuit someday that puts one of these SJW controlled companies out of business.”

What makes you think the courts won’t consistently side with the “SJW controlled companies” in any and all lawsuits to come?

>>Nate

“I know this is going into extreme, dystopian fantasy, but it would be trivially easy to cut somebody out of society altogether these days, and you would do it by exerting pressure not just on the person who has pissed of SJWs, but all of the people who that person associated with. It’s basically shunning with a technological twist and a breathtaking efficiency. You already see it at play with the Google debacle: not only did the offender get canned, anyone who expressed sympathy for him has been literally “blacklisted” by their own admission.

Anyone who “touches an “untouchable” becomes contaminated by that which makes the untouchable untouchable and themselves becomes an “untouchable” as well; that what makes “untouchables” untouchable.

A hotel can afford not to look into their guests,and demand the basics of good behavior (do not break stuff, do not make too much noise) and enforce it. Welcoming someone into your home is a riskier proposition, and people should be aware of what might happen.

I’m a little surprised to see Jones, who IIRC is a Muslim, claiming that there’s no obvious slippery slope from white supremacist (or neo-Nazi, depending on which report you read, and there are differences) to Southern Baptist.

Although Muslims are currently included in the definition of a protected minority, there’s a small and growing recognition that Islam contains within it attitudes that are at least as repressive towards homosexuals as those in Southern Baptism.

It’s not hard for me to imagine a slippery slope from white supremacists leading to anti-gay marriage campaigners and then occluding all conservative religious believers from acceptable public discourse in the eyes of the people who made this decision at Airbnb.

Remember folks, it only took a few months for the left to go from “Punch a Nazi” to “Shoot a GOP Congressman.”

For one short sentence, that sure is full of a lot of holes. For starters, none of those we’re talking about are “left.” Mostly they are substantial capitalist enterprises. The rest are liberals, and if you don’t know the difference, read up on how liberal (and racist) Woodrow Wilson sent socialist Eugene Debs to prison, and conservative Warren Harding released him.

More important, you’re talking about separate incidents by different individuals, none of them reporting in disciplined fashion to a central committee. So they don’t represent a coherent shift or step in a strategy, they represent the inchoate responses of various individuals, at least some of them with a history of certified mental illness.

I join in grumpy realist’s snicker. No sympathy at all for these opportunists.

“To be fair to the KKK and the Southern “Segregationists, they did not target Blacks, they targeted Blacks engaged in political activism against Jim Crow.”

Siarlys Jenkins :
Yes, massa, de good blacks what know their place, step off the curb and bow when a white man walk by, the KKK no bother them.
***************
I remember that happening even in the later 1970’s.
But the cadets at the military academy also did the same thing for any ladies passing by.

This is disgraceful Rod, I just read your book ‘The Benedict Option’ (and generally liked it), but I find it abhorrent that you would talk so offensively about alt-righters who disagree with you, and at the same time expect society not to hate you. Are we really so disgusting to you? You spread these lies that the alt-right is “neo-Nazi.” You should be ashamed of yourself for slandering people.

[NFR: Not all alt-righters are neo-Nazis. Some of the people who are official sponsors of those rallies are neo-Nazis. — RD]

There is not much difference in process, affect and in the justification of these actions by powerful individuals/organizations than what happened in Germany in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. It is scary to think that mainstream individuals and organizations can do this without seeing the big picture of what they are causing, because of the PC culture bubble they live in. People want to come to this country from all over the world because of our freedoms; freedom to express what we think, to think what we want, and to do what we want, as long as we don’t step on others rights in the process. What they are doing is against what this country stands for.

mrscracker, I see you know what I’m talking about. And I never witnessed it, being so far north there WERE no black people, but heard about it many years later from Tennessee cousins. For military cadets to do that for ladies is a courtesy. For people with dark skin color to be expected to do that routinely while people of lighter skin color were not, is something different.

Siarlys Jenkins,
“I see you know what I’m talking about. And I never witnessed it, being so far north there WERE no black people, but heard about it many years later from Tennessee cousins. For military cadets to do that for ladies is a courtesy. For people with dark skin color to be expected to do that routinely while people of lighter skin color were not, is something different.”
************
For sure, they’re quite different things.
For the cadets though, it was different but not a choice. They had to do that per academy rules & it was strictly enforced especially when school just started.
It was hard to make much progress along the sidewalks in town because every cadet you met would stop, remove their cap, bow a little & say “Good Morning, Ma’am”, or whatever they’d been instructed, & this was for every single lady they encountered. And it would happen repeatedly, over & over again until you’d duck inside a store if you saw any grey uniforms approaching. But overall I appreciated that courtesy was a part of the curriculum. We all need more of that.

How many Nazis and Klan members combined exist in the US? Some say 3,000, some say 5,000, in a population of about 320 million. I suppose the company believes its bottom line will not be impacted. Congratulations for moral preening.

By the way I consider myself alt-right. Don’t have any white robes or swastikas. I never met a Klansman or Nazi that I know of. I think there is a much greater chance I will see a Sasquatch or outer space alien before I die.

Can anyone tell me EXACTLY what is vile, evil or morally repugnant about being a white nationalist? Other than “they look down on people not like themselves”, as if every single group ever doesn’t do that and it’s not human nature.
You may not feel any connection to this movement, but I guarantee that your grandchildren, who grow up in an America so polarized, diverse and hostile to their very existence (especially if they are Christian and/or male and/or straight) will be on board, and wonder why you weren’t….

In a similar vein, I’ve noticed that many female escorts, including Black ones, who advertise on Backpage explicitly say that they will not accept Black clients. (This is often reduced to “no aa.”) Are they legally required to service Black clients?

Given that prostitution itself is not legal in most jurisdiction (and that is what Backpage escorts are up to), it’s unlikely that the EEOC is going to take an Internet clickgirl to court.

Lee writes, “Remember folks, it only took a few months for the left to go from “Punch a Nazi” to “Shoot a GOP Congressman.”

Let’s make a deal, I’ll refrain from saying that “the right” endorses assassinating abortion providers (because maybe a very small number do), if you will refrain from accusing “the left” of favoring the assassination of GOP congressmen (because maybe a very small number do).

I hope Airbnb gets sued. This is open racial discrimination, by the standards they use: this policy is designed to specifically exclude people from one race. The company’s policy and actions singles out one race for negative treatment and creates a disparate impact.

What’s more, lodging fulfills the human need for shelter, so this policy is sort of like a gas station owner installing a gaydar which will turn off the pumps to deny the possibility of transporation to those flagged by the gaydar.

Can anyone tell me EXACTLY what is vile, evil or morally repugnant about being a white nationalist? Other than “they look down on people not like themselves”

That seems quite sufficient to me. Oh, not that you THINK like that, but you know, if you were able to coalesce into a powerful political movement, that you might actually pass laws excluding some people from certain professions and trades, areas of town, participation in commerce, voting on laws that directly affect their lives, maybe killing a few, or a lot… Yeah, that’s vile, evil, and morally repugnant.

How many Nazis and Klan members combined exist in the US? Some say 3,000, some say 5,000, in a population of about 320 million. I suppose the company believes its bottom line will not be impacted. Congratulations for moral preening.

By the way I consider myself alt-right. Don’t have any white robes or swastikas. I never met a Klansman or Nazi that I know of. I think there is a much greater chance I will see a Sasquatch or outer space alien before I die.”
**************
I guess I’ve met both. I know a former KKK member & our old doctor had served in the Nazi Luftwaffe in WWII. But yes, the KKK really doesn’t amount to much these days. Which I think is a good thing.
I haven’t seen any space aliens but I did see ball lightning once. That actually did look like something from outer space.
🙂

However one views removing confederate statues from public spaces, you have to wonder how much better things might run in NOLA if they spent that kind of energy on safety issues:
Concerns about the pump system of the City of New Orleans intensified Thursday as a fire damaged a pump station and Mayor Mitch Landrieu said he’d lost confidence in the city’s water board.

At a press conference, Gov. John Bel Edwards said he declared a state of emergency for Orleans Parish as a precautionary measure, in the event the city needs state help with flooding later today, the Times Picayune reports.

Isn’t there tension between thinking Airbnb should have no right to decline service to these people, and thinking that Christian businesses should have a right to decline service to same sex weddings? In understand the legal issues raised differ (religious liberty, et al), but it seems odd to go from arguing it’s outrageous that businesses aren’t allowed to choose their clientele to arguing it’s outrageous that businesses can choose their clientele.

[NFR: I’m not sure who you’re addressing. As I said in my post, it doesn’t so much bother me that Airbnb wants to choose it’s clientele. What chills me is that they *searched out* people’s profiles to see if they were going to a political rally, and forbade them to use their service. — RD]

Given that AirBNB’s headquarters are in California, I wonder if the Unruh Act would prohibit discrimination in this case? And if not if individuals blacklisted could try to get a room in California and sue under that act there if still blacklisted.

Given that Neonazis have won lawsuits over being asked to remove lapel pins or leave premises in California…..

“Assuming these folks didn’t say in the comments for their reservations that they were in town to attend the rally, it means that AirBNB either investigated itself or relied on other people’s reports of who was attending the rally, cross-listed that with accounts, and then banned those people.”

From CNN – “Airbnb said that it had been alerted by its users that members of a neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer were planning to hold parties and stay at several Airbnb listings in town during the event. The company investigated and “removed these users” after finding that they were affiliated with the rally.”

I don’t at all have a problem with a company investigating violations of its stated standards that all users of its platform agree to by virtue of using its platform. In fact, I think that is not only within the purview of said company, but it is the responsibility of that company to enforce said standards.

The “less than four rental units” exemption doesn’t apply to racial discrimination.

Yes it does. Its a jurisdictional matter, not a list of greater and lesser goods and bads.

Congress wisely recognized that the blunt instrument of the law can be effective macroeconomically, but not so up close and personal as the environs of a person’s own home, on their own property, within the very building where they live. It doesn’t matter what the individual’s particular prejudice or passion may be.

Here is a summary from the NOLO web site, which betrays the author’s prejudices and unfortunate lack of thought, but still makes clear what the law says:

Unfortunately, not every rental is covered by the federal fair housing laws. The following types of property are exempt:

owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer rental units

single-family housing rented without the use of advertising or without a real estate broker, as long as the landlord owns no more than three such homes at any one time

certain types of housing operated by religious organizations and private clubs that limit occupancy to their own members, and

with respect to age discrimination only, housing reserved exclusively for senior citizens. There are two kinds of senior citizen housing exempted: communities where every tenant is 62 years of age or older, or “55 and older” communities in which at least 80% of the occupied units must be occupied by at least one person 55 years or older.

Fortunately for some tenants, however, many state fair housing laws cover properties or situations that are exempt under federal law. For example, owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer rental units are exempt under federal law but are protected under California law.

In my seldom humble opinion, California is in error, and the author of the article, Marcia Stewart, has put her mouth in gear before being sure her brain was engaged. I’m not sure the California law could be constitutionally challenged, but its poor public policy. One wonders whether Ms. Steward meant to say its unfortunate that a state has not required senior citizen housing to admit twenty-something newlyweds with three children.

Australia has legal prostitution, as do parts of Europe and Latin America. Should an Australian or German sex worker be able to decline Black clients (or, say, Muslim clients?)

Paging Lily von Shtupp…

That’s an interesting question, actually.

Romance and personal relations are one sphere in which people are entitled to discriminate as much as they like. Those who don’t like blacks are (and should be) under no requirement to date them, or vice-versa. Since Rod likes to blog about transgenders, nobody is ever required (or should be so) to play the crying game, if you catch my drift.

I suspect that for commercial intimacy (that term sounds particularly awkward), a similar standard might apply–even if done for money, a sex worker ought to enjoy greater freedom to decline clients than a guy selling hamburgers in a diner. And certainly, a gigolo whose gig is pleasuring rich old ladies shouldn’t necessarily be expected to service rich old men, if it’s not his thing (though many prostitutes, even if not gay or bi in their own personal lovelife, will accept same-sex clients for the right price–after all, part of the job description is pretending that the customer is the greatest lover in the world, regardless of his–or her–actual prowess).

But that’s a precedent I would construe quite narrowly, due to the highly personal and intimate nature of the service provided.